"Your son is dead," he told the Guardian.
Kree stood straight and tall in his dark mantle, his gaze somber as he looked down at Nelson.
"Then you have failed, outlander. But your judgment can come later for now the doom you helped bring here is sweeping toward us."
Yes, I helped bring that doom to L'Lan and the Brotherhood, he thought. I helped bring it, the death that is coming.
"Confine him until we judge him," Nelson heard Kree order. He heard the thought only vaguely, for his mind was too drunk with fatigue to function. He was hardly aware of walking unsteadily in the direction that guards pointed out with their swords, through corridors, through a door—
It was a green-glass walled chamber that they locked him into. Nelson, his mind darkening, stretched his wolf-body on the cool floor and sank into an abyss of sleep.
Chapter XV
THE WRATH OF THE CLANS
Nelson dreamed strangely in his stuporous sleep, dreams of thought-voices that his mind could hear, of forms moving around him, of, finally, a stunning, thunderous wave of force that rolled upon him.
He was overwhelmed by it, carried by it over the sheer brink of the world. He was falling into an awesome, howling gulf that was outside space and time, was falling, falling-
A strange shock stopped his fall. And then he became dimly aware that sensation was returning to him, that he was awaking.
"Is all well with you, Asha?" Nelson heard a thought-voice ask.
"All is well — and I am glad to have awaked from my sleep!" He heard the eager answering thought. That was strange. The question had been answered by Asha, yet he was Asha the wolf-at least he dwelt in the wolfs body.
Or did he?
Nelson suddenly realized that half his sense-perceptions were gone, that he could no longer scent anything at all. His body felt different. Not the tight, compact wolf-body to which he'd grown accustomed, but a long, gangling, awkward body—
Nelson, with an inarticulate cry, wrenched his eyelids open. But he knew what he would see before he looked down at himself. His hoarse wordless cry had been no wolf's howl but a human cry.
He looked down at the length of his own body again, sprawling in its dusty khaki uniform on a padded cot, still wearing its thought-crown. He moved arms and legs and they responded.
"I'm back," he whispered thickly.
"Yes," said a breathless voice. "You are back, Eric Nelson!"
He knew it for Nsharra's voice and he turned to look for her and looked full into the face of Asha the wolf. They lay side by side on two narrow cots — the wolf whose mind had slept so that a man could occupy his body — and the man.
Asha's body was dusty now, his hair matted with dried blood from wounds, his feet sore and bleeding. But his bright green eyes looked intelligently into Nelson's face. Nelson turned and looked up. Kree stood behind the cots, beside the big platinum mind-transference machine of the ancients.
"You brought me back into my own body while I slept?" Nelson said hoarsely.
"Yes," said Kree. "The force of the ancients stunned you in sleep so that you did not wake."
Nelson sat up. He felt strong, rested, fresh-and realized it was because his human body had lain here in coma for so long. Yet his human body now felt strange. He felt blinded and deafened by his loss of scent, felt slow, clumsy, awkward.
He sat up and saw that Nsharra stood at the foot of his cot. And that the four leaders of the great Clans were here — Tark and Hatha, the tiger and Ei. They were watching him.
"Death and danger walk toward Vruun on swift feet of flame," Kree was saying somberly. "Little time was left to give Asha back his body and return you to your body for judgment."
For judgment? That was why they had returned him to his humanity as doom drew close to Vrunn? Then the time had come.
Nelson stood up and faced them all. "I am ready," he said heavily.
"Tark and Ei have told us how you fought to save Barin — how you fought your friends," said Kree.
"They were not my friends, save one who is dead now," Nelson answered heavily. "I did not know, though, they were butchers."
"It seems you have learned much you did not know, outlander," said Kree. "You know now what it will be like for the Clans if the Humanites break the Brotherhood."
"Yes, I know that now," answered Eric Nelson sickly. Free children of the forest, hunted and slain and enslaved as in the outer world! Swift sentient folk of the Clans, crushed beneath a stupid human tyranny! He deserved what was coming—
"You are free to leave L'Lan," said Kree. Nelson stared, incredulous. "You're not going to kill me for what I've helped to do?"
Kree shook his head. "By your work last night, you redeemed the crime that you committed in ignorance. You can go."
Nelson looked at the Guardian, then around the watching leaders of the Clans.
"But I want to stay!" he cried. "I want to help you save the Brotherhood, to undo what I helped do here!"
Nsharra cried eagerly to her father, "Give him the chance! He will be loyal to us, I know!"
"He will be loyal," Tark's thought agreed. "And he knows the ways and weapons of the outlanders."
Kree's eyes searched Nelson's face, seemed to be searching his soul. Finally the Guardian spoke.
"So be it, outlander. Your help can be valuable in this hour of peril." He swung toward the others. "Clan-leaders, let the word run through all your Clans that this outlander fights on our side!"
"We shall see how he fights," growled the thought of Quorr the tiger.
Nelson felt the uplift of a queer buoyancy, as though an oppressive weight had been lifted from him. He knew, now. He knew that this Brotherhood that had at first seemed to his outer-world eyes so unnatural and alien was worth all sacrifices to preserve. He had learned that in the body of Asha the wolf.
And he felt strangely happy. For ten years he had fought the purposeless battles of warlords, first for adventure and then because he had no other profession. But this last battle was to be for a cause that he thought worth all he had to give.
Kree, as the Clan-leaders hurried out, led Nelson to a window that looked southward over Vruun.
"The hour comes fast upon us, outlander!"
Nelson was appalled by the spectacle. He realized now that hours had passed, for the sun was westering in a bloody, smoky murk. The whole southern sky was a wall of black smoke laced with livid flame — a wall that marched toward Vruun and was but a few miles distant. Only the forests west of the river were burning, but they were burning from the river to the western hills.
"That fire will be here in a few hours and Sloan and Van Voss and the Humanites will come after it!" Nelson exclaimed.
Kree nodded. "But we hope to stop it. The men of Vruun have labored all day to cut a fire-break from the river to the western hills."
"No mere fire-break will stop that!" Nelson told him emphatically. "It will jump it. You've got to start a backfire."
"Use fire as a defense against fire?" Kree looked worried. "The Clans would not like it. They hate all fire."
"Either that or the blaze will come into Vruun tonight!" Nelson warned.
Kree said reluctantly, "I will go with you and give the order."
As they turned, Nelson found Nsharra handing two heavy service pistols to him. He recognized them as his own and Lefty's.
"Less than twenty shots," he muttered, as he belted on the guns. "And Sloan and Van Voss will have submachine-guns and will have trained some of the Humanites to use grenades."
"But your experience of war will be valuable to us," Kree told him. "We know little of war in L'Lan. Our swords have only been used at long intervals to repel out-land tribes who sought to enter."